Why am I doing this?

I was in my bedroom, exploring my new city (Gent, BE) and the region on Google Maps in early January 2013. I noticed an island situated in the Netherlands’ Scheldt river which appeared in satellite mode but vanished in the simplified “map” view. I took my bike and I went to see if it existed or not.

The little game of walking on Google Maps as if it was real is something I often do when I’m bored and I waste my time. There are thousands of us who play this game, because it’s a great one, it’s like a world conquest. There is too many things to know on Earth, and if we had to visit all of these things, we would need more than one lifetime. What is the point in visiting a place if, upon going there we feel like we know it already because the internet refers to it a thousand times? Can’t an ordinary field lost in the Belgian countryside have the same emotional value as an Egyptian pyramid? Oddly, there’s no information about what here looks like a section of a road in a Parisian building site. We don’t know where it goes or where it comes from. It raises questions but there’s no one to answer them because nobody cares. You care and I care too. This “section of road” could be of a huge interest or it could be nothing, whatever, we just want to know.
I have the time and the enthusiasm, therefore I am offering this service to individuals. Let’s build together an infinite encyclopedia made up of unknown destinations.